A guitar typically has two main components, a neck and a body. The musician squeezes the strings of the guitar against frets that are on the neck in order to change intonations of the strings. The design of the neck is therefore an important part of the guitar's performance.
The design of the neck and the way it is connected to an guitar's body has remained basically unchanged for nearly a century. As shown in the prior art of FIG. 1, a guitar has a neck 1 attached to a body 2. The neck 1 is formed with a heel 1a that is glued or bolted to the outer surface of the side 2b of body 2. When bolted, two bolts running parallel to the length of neck 1 can be used. As an alternative to simply resting against the outer surface of the body's side, a portion of heel 1a can be received into a mortice in the body 2. In such a configuration, the heel and mortice can be dovetailed such that the neck cannot move in a forward-backward direction illustrated by double-headed arrow 6.
A fretboard 5 having a flat underside is glued to the flat upper surface of neck 1. The fretboard 5 typically offers twenty frets between a nut 4 at the far end of the neck, and the twentieth fret 9 which is closest to the center of body 2. The fourteenth fret 7 is located at the edge where heel 1a meets body 2. The region of the fretboard 5 between the fourteenth fret 7 and the proximal end of the fretboard adjacent the twentieth fret 9 is a "tail" portion 8 which is glued to the front surface 2a of body 2. The neck 1 ends before the tail portion 8 and therefore gives it no support.
The fretboard 5 is usually made of a stiff material such as plastic or wood, but it (together with neck 1) inevitably becomes warped or disfigured either at the time of manufacture or over time. When the fretboard 5 is viewed sharply down its length from a location near the head 3 of the guitar, the top edge 5a of fretboard 5 may have the shape shown in FIG. 2.
FIG. 2 shows an example of the disfigurement that the fretboard and neck may sustain. Ideally, the fretboard should be perfectly straight between the nut 4 and the twentieth fret 9. Unfortunately, a bowed or scooped region 5b often appears between the nut 4 and a hump 5c due to the tension of the strings, humidity, and/or some other factor. The location of hump 5c is typically at or near the fourteenth fret 7 where the fretboard's tail 8 ceases being supported by the neck and begins being glued to the front surface 2a of the body 2. Between the hump 5c and the twentieth fret 9 is a drop-off region 5d which, in the illustrated case, is the flat tail 8. It remains flat because it is glued to the body 2.
Strings 10 hover over the fretboard 5 and, when the guitar is played, must be squeezed against the frets. However, because of the disfigurement the low spots in the middle of the scooped region 5b make the guitar difficult to play, may make the guitar out-of-tune, and if severely warped will cause the strings to contact the hump 5c. These unwanted characteristics can only be fixed with a lot of labor. A technician must disassemble the guitar, change the angle of inclination of the neck 1 relative to the body 2, and re-attach the neck to the body. Disassembling the guitar begins by removing the glued tail 8 from the front surface 2a of body 2 at the risk of damage to the tail, neck, and/or body. The heel portion 1a of the neck must also be detached from the body 2. Next, the proximal surface 1b of the heel 1a is reworked to give a different angle of inclination to the neck. When the neck is reattached, the hump 5c might have been successfully removed thanks to the new angle of inclination, but the scooped region 5b will likely remain. In some prior art necks, a truss rod is embedded along the length of the neck and can be adjusted to straighten out the scoop 5b.
Another problem in the prior art is the fact that material is removed from the proximal surface 1b of heel 1a, moving the neck closer to the body and thus changing the intonation of the guitar. Additional labor may then be required to remove and relocate the bridge or saddle 34c in order to reinstate the original intonation.